It’s been a difficult few weeks for me personally of late – nothing cannabis related, just the real world intruding into my private space as it does from time to time, hence the lack of regular blogs. Things have been happening regardless however.

The main campaign being run by CLEAR for the past few months has been around access to medicinal cannabis, specifically Bedrocan. The Bedrocan family of products is real herbal cannabis grown to very high standards of consistency for the Dutch government. Unlike the British SATIVEX, which tries to hide it’s true identity by presenting itself as some kind of “cannabis based” concoction (actually it is real cannabis in oil form), Bedrocan is the real thing, it’s also a lot cheaper than SATIVEX and thus far easier for Dutxh people to get than SATIVEX is here.

Despite mountains of scientific evidence, the UK government continues to insist there is no medicinal value form real herbal cannabis and in theory it shouldn’t be possible to obtain Bedrocan from Holland legally. However, in direct conflict with the draconian and cruel faith based Misuse of Drugs Act it does actually seem to be possible and Jamie and some five other ill people have demonstrated over the past few months.

Last weekend CLEAR member Jamie (previously known only as “Clarence CLEAR”) made a return trip to Holland to pick up his second prescription. Jamie last did this in September and when it was announce on the CLEAR website it caused quite a stir with some people claiming it was a hoax.

So this time Jamie took CNN along for the ride and they recorded his trip to Holland, including (from a distance) his trip to the pharmacy and they confirmed that he declared the importation at customs. This will form a part of a larger documentary on medicinal cannabis in the UK CNN is to air early next year, but for now they broadcast a short report on Jamie’s trip last weekend.

Jamie is doing everything he can to remain within the law, by declaring it at customs he can argue he has imported the cannabis legally. It is a full frontal challenge to the workings of the Misuse of Drugs Act and he and the others are fully aware of the risks they are taking, but following two visits from his local police (following complaints about his cannabis use by a neighbour) who have checked his paperwork and left satisfied Jamie has yet to suffer any legal challenge.

This is all a part of the CLEAR campaign to expose the near corrupt SATIVEX scam. SATIVEX is a good cannabis product, but that it was developed purely to take the sting out of the cannabis law reform campaign and is horrendously expensive and virtually unobtainable is well known.

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CLEAR Cannabis law Reform has updated its core document ‘How To Regulate Cannabis In Britain’, The CLEAR Plan V2.0 This is based on the 2011 study ‘Taxing the UK Cannabis Market’ which CLEAR commissioned from the Independent Drug Monitoring Unit (IDMU).

CLEAR Plan V2.0 ‘How To Regulate Cannabis In Britain’ can be downloaded here

The IDMU document ‘Taxing the UK Cannabis Market’ can be downloaded here

Peter Reynolds, president and elected leader of CLEAR, said:

“We are publishing these proposals at a crucial time for the discussion about cannabis policy in Britain. Norman Baker, the new drugs minister, is completing a Home Office review which Nick Clegg has promised will be published before Christmas. The CLEAR Plan is the result of two year’s intensive study and a public consultation. It shows that cannabis regulation is a safer, more cost-effective and socially advantageous path for everyone in Britain.”

The IDMU was consulted on an updated version of its study but advised that the data has not significantly changed. Key evidence from the study shows that:

• The UK cannabis market is worth approx £6 billion per annum
• More than three tons of cannabis is consumed every day
• Approx three million people use cannabis regularly, at least once per month
• A tax and regulate policy could benefit the economy by approx £6.7 billion per annum

‘How To Regulate Cannabis In Britain’ sets out a detailed framework for cannabis regulation. Its objectives are:

1. To minimise all health and social harms of cannabis, particularly the involvement of organised crime.
2. To protect children and the vulnerable through age restrictions, responsible retailing, health education and information.
3. To maximise the therapeutic and medicinal benefits of cannabis
4. To promote quality, safety and the development of cannabinoid science.

The plan includes detailed proposals on the establishment of a Cannabis Inspectorate, medicinal use, retail sale, packaging and labelling, cannabis cafes, domestic and commercial cultivation, importation from producer countries such as Afghanistan and Morocco, cannabis social clubs, advertising and promotion.

Peter Reynolds added:

“This revised version of the CLEAR Plan considers all the responses to the public consultation along with advice from doctors, lawyers, policymakers, police officers and both medicinal and recreational users. The most important change is that we have removed the proposal for domestic cultivation licences. It was unpopular and the costs of enforcing such a measure would be counterproductive. I think once a regulated market is established, growing your own will become a minority pursuit, much like home wine or beer making.”

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Wednesday 9th October saw not one, but two events of interest to drug law reform campaigners.

First, the latest “smoke out” demo, or “peaceful protest” as they like to call them, took place in London. This one was organised by NORML-UK, the British arm of the American cannabis campaign. They had billed it as “The Cannabis Hypocrisy Protest”, an event which had been in the planning for the past year and a half. As Sarah McCulloch wrote on the NORML-UK blog

NORML UK undertook to organise the ¨Bedrocan Stunt¨ when it was founded in May 2012. It is something that many activists and groups have talked about for some time, with good reason.

The idea was certainly interesting: The fact that a medicinal cannabis user from Holland who is allowed to use herbal cannabis legally in this country was to be contrasted with medicinal users from this country who aren’t. This really should be a huge story, which presumably explains the long time it took to make the arrangements.

In case you don’t know the background to this strange state of affairs it’s all due to the Schengen Agreement which took effect in 2005. This is an agreement that, amongst other things, allows people to travel with and use medicines prescribed in one EU country to others. So we have the rather unbelievable situation in the UK whereby a Dutch resident (not, note, a Dutch citizen) can openly use medicinal cannabis in this country, but a UK resident can’t. UKCIA has some background to this here.

It is worth noting at this point that the recent CLEAR action whereby someone legally imported Bedrocan (prescribed herbal cannabis) from Holland did not involve the Schengen Agreement and is a direct challenge to the workings of the present policy.

NORML-UK announced the demo a couple of months back on its facebook page and did its best to promote it around the network of Cannabis Social Clubs (CSS). Taken together NORML-UK and the London CSS claim to have around 60,000 supporters in terms of the number of likes on Facebook. They put a lot of effort into promoting this event.

If you didn’t hear anything about this demo though, it wouldn’t come as a surprise because it got zero press attention, absolutely none, zilch. Now this may be in part because the press are toeing the government line and simply refusing to give any coverage of the issue and there may be some truth in this. Indeed that was also the case with the CLEAR action a few weeks before, press releases were sent out, nothing happened as a result.

In the event the plan to have someone there from Holland fell through, because apparently the person lined up

was required to attend a meeting in Paris, taking place at the same time as the demonstration in London.

and the replacement he tried to provide couldn’t get the paperwork done in time

This was down to timescales involved, and the agency in The Netherlands not advising of certain requirements necessary to complete the documentation.

Now given the core object of the demo was no longer possible, it might have been an idea to reconsider whether to go ahead, clearly the big story was no longer available to them, but they carried on anyway. In the event a fairly small crowd of people gathered somewhere near the Palace of Westminster (here), a location largely out of sight of the massed ranks of press just down the road at Parliament square.

Neither does it seem to have been a very well attended demo in all fairness, the group photo shared around Facebook shows about 50 people

NORML-UK Demo

This can be partly explained by the fact they held the demo mid week, which meant people who work couldn’t go. The reason for holding the event mid weeks was that MP’s don’t work weekends, but if this was meant as a lobby of MP’s there are better ways to go about it.

I really want to be supportive of any group that goes out and campaigns for cannabis law reform and I don’t doubt these guys are well motivated, but to be honest this event does seem to have come off a bit half-cock. Perhaps the photo isn’t a totally fair representation of the numbers there, but I doubt there were more than double that number. There really does need to be thousands at these events if they are to have any real impact. Given they spent 18 months organising this it was more than a little disappointing.

Also worth mentioning is that although there were real, genuine medicinal users at the demo, there were more than a few recreational users puffing away of fat tobacco filled joints. Is this the best way to get the medicinal case taken seriously? Really?

NORML-UK has done its best to hype the event and Allen St Pierre, Executive Director of NORML US, said of the protest;

NORML commends the men and women of NORML UK for conducting a creative, peaceful and informative press conference featuring medical patients who stand to therapeutically benefit from having legal access to physician-recommended cannabis products

Pity it wasn’t actually a press conference. Perhaps a properly organised press conference where the legal medicinal use of cannabis was demonstrated directly to the media might have been a better event to have organised, rather than the smoke-out that it actually was?

Sorry to be critical but the law reform campaign really has to be better than this. We need to be getting the message out there in a way that will be taken seriously by the people we need to influence. The medicinal access campaign in particular is so very important and mixing it up with the wider recreational issue isn’t going to influence anyone and arguably damages the cause.

Actually, it isn’t quite right to say no-one reported on the event, the famous blogger Guido Fawkes reported

Legalise marijuana protesters are lighting up spliffs on College Green and you can smell them from a mile off: There are no police around so see you down there. Bring snacks.

Guido Fawkes Blog coverage of a medicinal cannabis press conference

I think that says it all really.

Elsewhere, later on the same day there was a media event this week which was somewhat more positive. As much as I love to hate BBC3 and its dumbed down coverage of UK culture and current affairs, this week’s “Free speech” studio debate was something of an eye opener. It actually featured a CLEAR member Michael Fearnley in his TV debut,

But the debate was really interesting for three things: MP Dr Julian Huppert who spoke passionately about the need for reform of the drug laws, Katie Hopkins who came across as the sort of mother no-one would want and the studio audience who were amazingly supportive of MP Dr Julian Huppert’s views in favour of drug law reform. If Katie Hopkins is typical of the sort of people opposing drug law reform now – and in many ways she is – we’re pushing at an open door.

Free Speech is available on iplayer for another few days here The drugs debate is at 44 minutes, catch it if you can.

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‘Prohibition is harm maximisation’ – Perhaps a new slogan for the general drug law reform campaign, it would certainly be a good one.

Prohibition is quite unlike any other government policy in that it actually sets out to increase the risk from the thing it’s supposed to be protecting society from; specifically drugs policy makes drugs and involvement with drugs more dangerous than it would otherwise be. It does this in a number of ways, but perhaps most importantly by seeking to disrupt the supply and lower the quality of the product sold.

One of the indicators of ‘success’ of the prohibition regime is an uncertain supply, which means widely varying doses and high levels of contamination. The logic – if that is the right word – behind this is that fear of the increased danger presented by an uncertain supply will increase the deterrent effect and hence reduce drug use. This is prohibition thinking, of course it doesn’t work.

So it is with cannabis that in the early 1990′s we were introduced to a concept that had never occurred to cannabis users before; polluted hashish. As the supply of hash from North Africa was closed off through the prohibition efforts of HM Customs and crop eradication campaigns in the producer countries, supplies were bulked out with some pretty nasty stuff. ‘Soap bar’ hash in particular became synonymous with low quality and tales of contaminants were legion. Stories emerged off all sorts of stuff being mixed into soapbar, For example from The Contaminated Cannabis Soapbar Blog lists

Now of course, as we know far from dissuading cannabis users from getting stoned, this lowering of quality created the market conditions for the domestic cultivation industry. What the Daily Mail likes to call ‘skunk’ cannabis found a ready market as customers were eager to buy the far higher quality product.

Now an important distinction has to be made between the large scale criminal industry that supplies most of the ‘street’ cannabis and that produced by home growing enthusiasts. The latter group of people take a pride in their produce, the former are simply interested in making huge profits as quickly as possible.

We have seen a large scale contamination scare a few years ago with ‘gritweed’ – microscopic glass beads sprayed onto cannabis buds presumably to increase the weight, but it is through the intensive production techniques of the large scale criminal ‘grow ops’ that another potentially far worse threat of contamination has reared its head – the over use of OP (organophosphate) pesticides (wikipedia)

As any gardener will tell you, growing the same crop in a confined space with a rapid turnover is a great way to encourage infestation, bugs which kill the plants. An effective way to kill the bugs is to spray with OP’s. This is fine as long as these chemicals are used carefully, but if not they can pose a significant health risk. There is a very high possibility that “crim weed” will contain unhealthy levels of OP pesticides.

Now of course, the important point to make here is we simply do not know the level of danger this presents because we don’t know the size of the problem. The massive cannabis supply industry is underground, hidden and totally without control or regulation.

According to the government, this fear of the unknown would count as another ‘success’ for the prohibition effort.

Far from being concerned about the effect on peoples health though politicians keep details of such contamination very, very quiet because they know what a PR disaster it could become for the drug policy, but this might be about to change.

In recent months there have been a large number of deaths of young people who thought they were taking ecstasy (MDMA), but who were sold fake pills containing a different and very much more toxic drug PMA. As The Economist reported back in July in an article headlined “Pointless deaths”

What ties these stories together is that in every case, the suspicion is that the victims took something that looked like an ecstasy tablet, but may not have been. Many are thought to have taken PMA tablets—a far stronger drug than MDMA, the usual ingredient in ecstasy—or something else entirely. PMA takes longer than MDMA to kick in and so users may chase the first pill with a second or third. When they are eventually ingested, the result is catastrophic.

In fact stories have been turning up in local papers for some time now – this from Manchester Evening News form April

Ruth Purdie Cheshire Polices Assistant Chief Constable, said: “While we would always urge people not to take any illegal substances, I am particularly keen to emphasise the dangers and potentially life threatening consequences of PMA.

“We have now had three deaths in Cheshire which appear to be linked to the drug and therefore I feel I have a duty to warn people about the potentially fatal consequences taking this drug can have.

Polluted supplies are a measure of success for the prohibition policy remember, but even so you might think the government would be keen to warn ecstasy users of this serious problem, but you would be wrong. The government has know about this for some time and has done nothing.

One way to do something is to run a pill testing service so that users can have their pills properly tested as is happening in some countries. Channel 4 news reported on developments in Vienna

Next to the dancefloor a queue is forming. As we walk to the top of the stairs, we see a blue curtain and, behind it, a team of trained counsellors talking to clubbers in measured tones. There is a small weighing machine on the table.

It’s 10 o’clock and the CheckIt! team have already spoken to about 50 people. They are calm, reassuring and they’re counselling a steady stream of young people. They’re also taking samples of people’s drugs to send them for testing.

It should be remembered that testing is the second best option really, if the pills were properly made in the first place they wouldn’t need testing, this problem only exists because of prohibition but testing is better than nothing.

Our government is absolutely opposed to such a thing happening here which they would see as an attempt at quality control, something that would undermine the prohibition effort, but they have been forced into what is at really a third best option. Following several recent high profile deaths in Manchester there is to be at long last some pill testing, but it’s being done in a way which is intended to be seen as a branch of prohibition enforcement. As reported by Spin

Any drugs confiscated are going to be put through a machine,” the Warehouse Project’s Sacha Lord told the BBC, “which in seconds evaluates what is the makeup of that particular confiscation. We can then send out messages via social media during the event.

Not quite a useless way of going about it, but close to. How much better it would be to do the job right, with the involvement of the users themselves, but no, we cannot have quality control, the prohibition harm maximisation goal must not be undermined, so what if people die?

The PMA scare is real and up to July this year around 20 people have died because of it (Guardian). We could be looking at a grisly figure of around 40 deaths by the end of the year, all people who need not have – indeed should not – have died.

Anybody who uses any drugs supplied under the prohibition regime is at risk, as explained above even cannabis users. Perhaps it’s time to open a new front in the campaign against drug prohibition, a campaign for quality control? Really though, it comes down to controlling and regulating the supply industry, the answer is simple – end prohibition.

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Over the past 18 months or so CLEAR - and in particular its leader, Peter Reynolds – has been the focus of a particularly nasty campaign dedicated to undermining the work of CLEAR. Central to this campaign is a particularly vile website called “Peter Reynolds Watch” (PRW) – if you’re really curious you can see the site here.

The site accuses Peter Reynolds of all sorts of evil traits – especially of being an anti Semitic homophobic racist, although it seems to have deleted all the posts which used to make the allegations of homophobia and racism, along with various other claims of moral dodgyness. probably because they were carried by this site before it was founded in late 2012. Yes, PRW has been going quite a but longer than it admits to.

Anyway, the point of all this is to highlight the latest post from James Collins on PRW- James is a regular contributor to both PRW and NORML UK – and it’s interesting to contrast it with the last post he made to NORML UK.

The latest PRW post is entitled “CLEAR wants you to go to prison” Posted on September 16, 2013. (here)

This is a “report” about a recent bit of direct action campaigning carried out by CLEAR and organised by Peter Reynolds. What actually happened was a medicinal cannabis user arranged for a prescription written by his GP, arrangements were made to collect a supply of Bedrocan (pharmaceutical grade herbal cannabis) from Holland, which the medicinal user went over to collect. On return to this country the cannabis was declared at red channel in customs and all the paperwork was presented. The result of this was that after some delay the customs waved the supply through, meaning it was imported legally. That is not open to doubt, it was passed by UK customs, it was legally imported.

Now, let’s make something clear, there is still a problem with the misuse of drugs Act which makes cannabis illegal to possess, so the person could still face possession charges, something the person is and always has been fully aware of. However, given the cannabis was imported legally on the advice of a doctor it would be most unlikely a possession charge would produce much more than a discharge. At all times the person concerned did his/her best to comply with the law, the economics of the deal rule out any profit motive from dealing, so no supply charge could be brought or would stick.

The PWR account of this is, as might be expected, hysterically inaccurate

CLEAR has recently announced a new means by which, they claim, citizens of the United Kingdom can now legally obtain cannabis medicine with a prescription. The end has come. Prohibition is over and Peter Reynolds is solely responsible. Everyone rejoice!!

and

Sounds like a bottle of snake oil to me. Even CLEAR says it isn’t 100%, although they seem hesitant to admit that the consequences of failure could be a serious criminal charge for attempting to smuggle contraband through customs.

Except of course, that is exactly what didn’t happen, the goods were declared at customs, not smuggled through. It is that which makes this special and not,er, “a bottle of snake oil”.

In fact CLEAR has claimed, correctly, that cannabis on prescription was legally imported into the UK. It does therefore represent a significant development. James Collins calls this a “loophole”, which is in fact another way of saying “a legal way to do something”. Exploiting loopholes of course is what campaigning groups are supposed to do. Exploiting “loopholes” is not a crime.

James Collins also makes the accusation that CLEAR is making money from this, which is untrue. In fact what is happening is CLEAR has a medicinal users group within its membership and joining CLEAR costs £5 for concessionaires – yes, a whole fiver (or £10 is you’re working). The medicinal group are not only following this “loophole” route but are also engaged with various MP’s in the organisation of a Parliamentary delegation, about which I’ll say no more for now.

Fact is it has been a long, slow process to get this far and there’s a lot of work to do yet, it’s not the sort of campaigning James and his mates are capable of, they prefer a different approach. Anyone going down this “loophole” route is fully aware of the potential problems, not least of all because they have to give all their details – name, address etc – to the customs officer when they make their declaration.

James claims this is a re-run of the Pinky Starr effort a few years ago, which Peter Reynolds also organised (see here). It wasn’t, it is something entirely different. That attempt involved the Schenegen agreement, this was nothing to do with Schenegen. Pinky Starr unwisely did not declare his import at customs either.

In his article on NORML UK recently (here) James shows his support for Smoke Outs – gatherings where people openly smoke cannabis in public places. James writes:

There has never been a better time for smoke outs. There has never been a better time for protest and civil disobedience. The auspice of medical cannabis has flown out the door and the battle for full medical and recreational access is being fought. It’s not only being fought, it’s being won. Inertia is, for the first time since the prohibition of cannabis begun, finally in favor of the cannabis movement.

We’ll skip lightly over the conflation of medicinal and recreational use here and also the strange use of the phrase “auspice of medical cannabis has flown out the door”, which implies protection or support for medical cannabis has gone away, which is exactly not the point he is trying to make.

As I explained in my last article (here) I do personally have some sympathy for the idea of direct action to defy bad laws and smoke-outs (or “smoke ins” as we called them not so long ago) are nothing new, but there are problems with the way they are happening in this country – the use of tobacco and involvement of young people being two issues I highlighted.

James Collins seems to think it’s fine to encourage people to come to these events, using the argument that a mass movement will overthrow the law. It implies safety in numbers, an unstoppable force. Yeah maybe, but of course people could get busted – it’ll happen eventually, perhaps being done for dealing as well. James was very concerned in his PRW post about the effects of getting busted

but anyone who knows someone who has been arrested knows how lengthy and stressful the arrest and trial process is.

A concern not expressed for the mass of people – probably mostly naive young people – James wants to come to his smoke-outs. So I do wonder who is being most callous in their use of people here? Is it CLEAR who provide a medicinal user with the help to tread a very thin line of legality to get their medicine, ensuring that every step of the way they do their level best to remain within the law and where the end user is fully aware of the risks they are taking, or NORML UK and James Collins who encourage people to the smokeout demos selling the idealistic concept that mass protest will work, despite the fact it hasn’t done so in 40 years of trying in this country?

One thing is very clear from Jame’s article on NORML UK, it isn’t actually written from the British perspective at all, it’s American through and through.

Slow normalization has worked magnificently over the last 10 years or so. Cannabis has come out of the closet in a very major way. If you’re old enough you will remember a time that one did not simply buy premade “blunt wraps” with a pot leaf on the package down at the 7-11.

Yeah, I noticed that in Norwich the other day… not!

I remember a time when one did not simply spark up a joint in public. You went and hid behind a dumpster, and you were afraid somebody would smell it. Now I see people walk through the streets of major cities with a five-paper cone in hand like it wasn’t a big deal.

A dumpster is a skip if you’re confused. But really? This person is writing about another place, another culture. Yes it sounds great, but ‘taint here.

Now I don’t know if James Collins is American, but that article on NORML UK clearly is. The spelling is American English and the events he describes are those which have happened Stateside, not here. So either James is American (or Canadian), writing in ignorance of the actual situation this side of the pond, or he’s lifted an article by someone else without really thinking about it too much. Google doesn’t show this article anywhere else, so my money is on James being in North America, judging from the article in NORML UK he’s writing about a country, a culture and a legal system (the UK) he doesn’t really understand. The writing in the PRW article is also a little American in style.

NORML-UK is the UK branch of the American cannabis law reform campaign of course, which might explain the connection. Either way, James Collins is inconsistent in his views and seems to have an agenda he isn’t being totally open about, he seems to be out to harm CLEAR, that’s for sure.

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“Smokey Bears picnics”, “Smoke-ins”, “Smoke ups” or – as they now seem to be called – “smoke outs” have been a tactic used by the legalise cannabis campaign for a long time. Essentially, people get together to openly smoke cannabis in defiance of the prohibition law. Over the years these events have taken various forms from small scale “picnics” to large scale marches.

I’m open to be corrected, but the first of these would seem to have been in Hyde Park in 1967

Several such events took place throughout the 1970′s in Hyde Park, most times without incident or interference from the forces of law and order. After something of a lull, another wave of demos happened in the late 90′s and early 2000′s, including “Free cannabis in the park” picnics organised by Free Rob Cannabis and Smokey Bears picnics. Smaller events also happened around the country, most notably in Portsmouth (where the bear seemed to live) and Norwich, home of the original CLCIA and LCA.

In 1998 the Independent on Sunday ran a short lived “Decriminalise cannabis” campaign which sponsored a march from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square

Over the next few years large marches and festivals happened in London’s Brockwell Park, attracting over 20,000 people to the march and many more to the park.

So direct action events like this are nothing new and they are certainly fun, they give a sense of cultural solidarity and give the cannabis enthusiast something to do. Question is, what did these demos achieve? Sadly thus far the result has been zilch. Prohibition is still with us and nothing has changed and indeed, things have got a lot worse.

Back then though, it did seem like we were pressing on an open door, cannabis law reform was news and things were changing. The police in Brixton had adopted a softly softly approach toward cannabis use which seemed to be a move towards a decriminalisation which would role out across the country. Shortly after came the move of cannabis from class B to class C of the misuse of Drugs Act (MoDA).

The aim of the demos was to ride this wave of optimism and to get the average cannabis user to stand up and demand his or her rights, but in all honesty it didn’t happen, the population didn’t stand up and be counted. In truth most cannabis users didn’t get involved for whatever reason and by the mid 00′s the cannabis law reform movement was frankly out of steam and falling to bits. It was easy for the Daily Mail and its ilk to paint cannabis campaigners as selfish, uncaring about the harm cannabis was claimed to be causing. A sustained press campaign against cannabis took the form of the reefer madness V2 scare, the government of Gordon Brown played the populist card and reclassified cannabis back to class B.

However, if anyone thought the law reform campaign was dead, they were wrong. The reefer madness scare managed to bring about an understanding in the general public that the big problem we had with cannabis was two fold: The type of cannabis being sold (the “skunk” panic) and the number of young kids getting stoned. In addition it was becoming clear that we had a big problem with organised crime – industrial scale cannabis farms involved in people smuggling and extortion, violent crime increasing and so on. The agenda had changed from “free the weed” to “control this prohibition created anarchy”.

This new agenda has begun to show great results. The victories in Colorado and Washington State ballots which legalised recreational use there came on the back of creating a regulated regime for the commercial trade, protecting youngsters and raising taxes. A leglised regime is now seen increasingly as the best way to restrict cannabis use to adults, to control the trade and to reduce harm, it is a very different argument now compared to 10 years ago.

Also, something else happened, tobacco use has become far less socially acceptable. The restrictions on tobacco use are generally popular and tobacco is seen and understood by most people to be the dangerous, destructive and addictive drug that it is.

This year has seen something of a resurgence of the old “smokey bear” tactic with gatherings like the Hyde Park 420 day and more recently a whole series of similar events organised by groups under the banner of cannabis social clubs, their job made easier by the event of social media , especially Facebook. Now called “smoke outs” or simply “peaceful demonstrations” this idea is the same; people gather somewhere and defy the law.

Is this a good thing?

Well a large part of me says “yes it is” because personally I have a lot of sympathy for people who want to stand up to bad laws. Indeed we can look to history to see examples where this has happened – the trade unions campaign for recognition, the Civil rights movement in the USA, Gandhi’s independence campaign in India or the Stonewall fight for gay rights more recently. None of these rights would have been won without people peacefully defying the establishment. There is no doubt that civil disobedience, challenging unjust laws and – lets be honest – down right law breaking is often the only way that rights are won and bad laws come to an end. After all, if everyone simply touches their forelocks and does what they’re told nothing is ever going to change. In short I don’t have a problem with anyone who decides to make a demonstration of defiance of a bad law.

This is how the organisers and participants in this latest resurgence of the smokey Bears Picnics see themselves, they are fighting for what they see as their right to use cannabis without interference by the state. The problem is, that isn’t where we are now and it isn’t where the law reform debate is going.

The worldwide march toward change is built on the widely understood need to control the commercial trade, close down the black market and to restrict access to cannabis by kids. All the movement towards a legal trade we see involves an age limit for sales of at least 18 or even 21. So what message do the smoke-outs give?

The first problem is perhaps inevitable with any kind of defiant direct action, it’s likely to attract younger people than older. An event that pulls a large proportion of teenagers – albeit late teenagers – is kind of missing the point and somewhat shooting themselves in the foot. Do these campaigners support the idea of age limits for sales? If so a large proportion of the people attending will be excluded.

The other big problem of course is tobacco. Here we have a public demonstration of people smoking huge amounts of tobacco because – apparently – it’s an important part of the cannabis culture. How good does that look, really? How helpful is it to the cause of cannabis law reform?

Worse, when people puffing away on tobacco filled joints explain they are fighting for the right to use cannabis medicinally I cringe. Tobacco is everything that cannabis isn’t – it’s a carcinogenic, addictive killer. Cannabis isn’t cancer causing and doesn’t kill, but only if it’s used pure and not mixed with tobacco. I know there are medicinal activists who support this sort of direct action, but I also know there are a hell of a lot who do not, who are repulsed by the “joint smoking stoner” stereotype. Unfair as that awful stereotype is, the smoke-outs only re-enforce it.

It’s worth pointing out that in the US they don’t have this tobacco connection with cannabis to anything like the same extent we do. The smoke-out demos over there are really for cannabis.

The wonderful changes we’re seeing around the world today are not coming on the back of people demanding their right to get stoned so much as an understanding of how ineffective prohibition is at doing what it claims to be doing – controlling the drugs trade. Change is coming not because of a desire for greater freedom of choice on the part of cannabis users, but the failure of prohibition to be an effective legal tool. Prohibition isn’t dealing with reality, simple as that.

So my feeling about these smoke-out events is mixed. I do see a role for civil disobedience, to openly challenge a bad law, so I support the idea of events designed to do precisely that. But that said they shouldn’t undermine the arguments for law reform that are being taken seriously and which are showing support way beyond the recreational cannabis consumer. Any form of direct action should support the argument for age limits for sales and awareness of safer use techniques.

In particular, if I had to pick one issue, it would be the need to distance cannabis use from tobacco because the tobacco connection is by far the biggest health risk posed by cannabis use and can only serve as a barrier to making cannabis use acceptable.

Fact is we do have to break this prohibition log-jam and opening the door to recreational use is the key to doing that, but it will be a controlled, regulated access. That might be an anathema to some, but it is the real world. Prohibition is justified on the back of preventing young people “abusing” cannabis, nothing else really. That excuse is used to justify denying all the other uses of this wonderful plant. If there were to be a way that adults could use cannabis legally for fun – even with the most stringent restrictions – it would open the door to everything else cannabis has to offer. I suppose it comes down to asking just what it is we want to achieve, but it isn’t “free the weed” any more.

This post originally appeared on CLEAR Cannabis Law Reform

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This is all such a long time ago now a quick reminder is called for. Back in June MP Diane Abbott was all over the media warning of the increased danger caused by “skunk” cannabis. She did this on the basis of a question she asked to the Secretary of state for Health (see here for the story)

Her question was

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people were admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of mental or behavioural disorder due to use of cannabinoids in each year since 2005-06

The answer showed an uptick in the numbers since reclassification of cannabis to class B, which is an interesting correlation Ms Abbott chose not to highlight, instead she used the figures to spread fear about cannabis use leading to mental health problems.

Actually, there is another issue – the question didn’t ask about cannabis, rather it asked about “cannabinoids” and that would seem to include the compounds found in “legal highs”, like Spice, K2 etc. These compounds are properly called “Synthetic Cannabinoid Receptor Agonists” or SCRAs.

To get to the bottom of this I wrote to my MP, Simon Wright (Libdem) on 17th June 2013

Dear Mr Wright

A recent question from Dianne Abbot to the Secretary of State for Health for health asked

“To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people were admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of mental or behavioural disorder due to use of cannabinoids in each year since 2005-06”

This has been picked up in the press as further proof of the harm caused by skunk cannabis. However, the question wasn’t about cannabis as such, but the use of cannabinoids, which includes synthetic cannabinoids as found in the so-called “legal highs” such as K2, Spice etc which have been gaining popularity in recent times. It is interesting to note the rise since 2008-9, when synthetic cannabis became widely available

Can you ask the Secretary of State how many of these admissions were for the use of natural (including skunk) cannabis as distinct from the use of synthetic cannabinoids?

Sincerely

Derek Williams

Today, 2nd August, I have finally got a responce

This information is categorised according to the World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). ICD-10 has a code for cannabinoids, but does not break it down into sub-categories. Unfortunately I am therefore unable to provide the information that Mr Williams seeks.

So they don’t know and they don’t even try to collect such figures, yet Diane Abbott is quite happy to use spread fear on the basis of them.

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When a politician uses a word which sounds like something you understand but is subtly different, it’s a good idea to be suspicious. One such word game we’re used to already with cannabis is the word “potency”, which sort of sounds like “strength” but actually means something very different. Have a read of this if you don’t know the distinction and why it’s important. Not unconnected with the issue of potency are the claims of mental health problems caused by the use of high potency cannabis (so-called “skunk”) and as we know the skunk panic is a favourite of prohibition supporting politicians who use the fear of mental illness as a reason for stronger prohibition.

So it was that we had another example of the subtle use of words and this time the lack of understanding, or perhaps deliberate misrepresenting, lead to another bout of anti cannabis hysteria in the press. At the root of it was a question by prohibition supporting Diane Abbott MP, Labour shadow health minister. Ms Abbott asked the following question:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people were admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of mental or behavioural disorder due to use of cannabinoids in each year since 2005-06

Spot the slight of hand? If not, here’s a clue: A seemingly very similar question was asked in 2011 by Charles Walker:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people (a) under the age of 18, (b) between 18 and 24, (c) between 24 and 30 and (d) 30 and above were admitted to hospital for mental illnesses attributable to the use of cannabis or skunk cannabis in each of the last 10 years.

If you didn’t spot it, Diane Abbott asked about “Cannabinoids”, not cannabis. This is important because cannabis is not the only source of cannabinoids which are available for purchase as recreational drugs, the so-called legal high fake cannabis contain synthetic cannabinoids, or to give them their formal name “synthetic cannabinoid Receptor Agonists” or SCRAs for short. Dianne Abbotts question therefore was not about cannabis use, but about cannabis and SCRA use.

The answer she got was for total cannabinoid use, not cannabis specifically. The important point being it showed quite a large proportionate increase in hospital admissions for mental health issues which the press – and Dianne Abbott herself – attributed to cannabis use.

So was Diane Abbott deliberately seeking to mislead with her question, knowing that the answer would sound like proof of the increasing harm of cannabis? Or did she simply not understand the wider use of the term cannabinods? Either is possible and I am asking via my MP for clarification, although a week after doing so I’m still waiting. Ms Abbotts office refused to clarify the situation with the somewhat lame excuse that I am not one of her constituents.

But there’s a deeper twist to this. Charles Walker’s 2011 question was specifically about cannabis, not cannabinoids, so what about the answer? Paul Burstow – Minister of State (Care Services), Health – a Libdem MP answered:

The following table represents the count of finished admissions by required age groups for patients admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of mental and behavioural disorders due to use of Cannabinoids

So even when asked a cannabis specific question, the answer was given for the use of all cannabinoids, which includes non-cannabis products. This is certainly misleading, so what’s going on?

The thing to remember about SCRA’s and the whole “legal high” trade is that it’s relatively new. Before about 2008 or so the only source of cannabinoids was indeed cannabis and of course, cannabis contains more than one cannabinoid. So it was historically correct to ask about cannabinoid use when asking about cannabis, however, it isn’t now, the arrival of SCRAs has changed all that and “canabinoids” is no longer a word that only encompasses cannabis. I so far haven’t been able to discover whether figures for SCRA admissions are recorded separately to those for cannabis, but clearly they should be.

Perhaps Dianne Abbott was aware that the only available statistics related to cannabinoid use and asked the question which would obtain the “correct” answer, in which case she should be aware of the distinction between asking about the effects on mental health of cannabis and cannabinoid use. If she isn’t aware of the distinction she shouldn’t have asked such a scientifically specific question.

But whether through malice or ignorance, she issued to following press release on her blog:

In just three years, the number admitted for treatment has increased by 50 per cent.

Diane Abbott MP, Labour’s shadow public health minister has warned of the risk posed by hard skunk on British streets:

‘These figures are really concerning. I think that too often, people are willing to romanticise cannabis. What we’re seeing on our streets is often skunk – many times more powerful than the cannabis which today’s ageing baby-boomers smoked in college. These figures show that skunk is creating big problems in Britain.

‘The government’s lack of focus and interest in this issue, and the way they have abolished the National Treatment Agency, means that many of these problems may get even worse.

‘Evidence of the damage to mental health caused by cannabis use – from loss of concentration to paranoia, aggressiveness and outright psychosis – is mounting and cannot be ignored. We need to give out an uncompromising warning about the links between skunk and mental illness.’

The figures Ms Abbott is talking about were given in the answer to her question which asked for the number of people were admitted to hospital with a primary diagnosis of mental or behavioural disorder due to use of cannabinoids in each year since 2005-06:

Now it’s true that these figures are not huge – there are millions of cannabis users – but they do show a trend, which is sharply upward following a period of decline. SCRAs arrived on the scene en mass around 2008-9, so it is entirely possible and indeed very likely that this sharp upswing in hospital admissions is not due to cannabis use at all, but by the use of products containing SCRAs like K2 or Spice.

The thing is, Diane Abbott should have thought about these figures a bit, because (if the government is to be believed) cannabis use is falling and has been falling throughout this period, assuming the figures are accurate the decline in cannabis use is mirrored by a decline in admissions up to 2009, when it goes sharply into reverse. That must mean something happened and the arrival of SCRA drugs is the obvious explanation.

The first conclusion to draw from this is that Diane Abbott is an even more undesirable politician than most and that’s saying something. She deliberately asked a question using a term (cannabinoids) which either she didn’t understand or she knew would produce an inflated result, she then uses this incorrect data to spread fear in support of her previously held prohibitionist view. That’s bad, it’s very bad.

It would be good to get to the bottom of this, but it needs a constituent of Ms Abbotts to ask the question. So does anyone live in her constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington? If you do please contact me and I’ll let you know what to ask.

The other possible conclusion to draw is that SCRAs are far more dangerous than cannabis as far as the risk to mental health is concerned. Although SCRA use is relatively recent and is far lower than cannabis use taking these figures at face value it would seem they are potentially producing about the same, maybe more, mental health problems. SCRAs of course have only come about because of prohibition and they simply would not exist if real cannabis were available. Ms Abbott may have unearthed an important snippet of information with her question, but sadly she didn’t think it through, instead she jumped on it as an opportunity to make a cheap political point – a cheap political point which is possibly dangerously wrong.

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Believe it or not it’s 10 years ago since the start of the reefer madness V2.0 scare and it’s still being hyped by the same people. Last week saw a flood or identikit re-printing of the same press release, such as this one in the ever dependable Daily Mail

Now there isn’t much point in going through the argument as to why this story is a serious misrepresentation of the truth, it is but as it’s already the subject of a PCC complaint the issues have been well covered.

Let us, for a moment, take this report at face value and assume it is totally 100% accurate. Just for the sake of argument.

The claim is explained by The Mail which reported:

A 2008 Home Office survey found average concentrations of THC – the active ingredient in cannabis – of 16 per cent. But in some samples the level was much higher – up to 45 per cent.

Skunk also contains less of an anti-psychotic ingredient which moderates the harmful effects of THC. Repeated studies have shown the harmful impact on mental health of cannabis use among young people.

Now, if this is true – and it might be – it does raise an awkward question the Mail doesn’t address which is why the market for skunk came into being. One of the claims that paper is often making is that “skunk” is so much more powerful than the cannabis of old, the mild cannabis the hippies of the 1970′s enjoyed with so little harm.

Cannabis, it is claimed, has changed in recent years and mutated into this new, dangerously damaging product. This has especially happened in the past 10 – 20 years which is odd, because it didn’t happen at any time in the previous several thousand of years of humans using and growing cannabis. If The Mail is right then it must mean that something has happened recently to change the economics of production and supply. What has happened to cannabis since the 1970′s that could possibly have done that?

Now we don’t have to look far for an answer to what could have changed the market for cannabis, the answer is of course the global war on drugs. The nice, safe, low potency high CBD cannabis we all enjoyed in the 1970′s (according to The Mail) was gown outdoors in large fields, such as high up in the Rift mountains of North Africa, a naturally grown crop tended by people with a tradition of cannabis growing. It was then imported to this country in ever increasing amounts up to the late 1980′s/ early 90′s when the prohibition effort which had started in the early 70′s really began to bite. Crop eradication in the producer countries, stronger customs enforcement and all the rest saw a huge drop off of in the quality of imported hash. In the early 90′s the dreadful “soap bar” contamination became a serious problem. A huge demand for a better quality product was created by the enforcement efforts and that market was satisfied by herbal cannabis grown in this country – the so called “skunk”. The fact that the British government was unaware of this market shift for about 10 years – until 2008 – should be a cause of concern, but doesn’t seem to be. So much for cannabis being a “controlled drug”!

So yes, there was a market shift from imported cannabis to home produced varieties and it was caused absolutely and without doubt by the prohibition policy, what they laughingly call an “unintended consequence”. So if what The Daily Mail says is true and cannabis has become more dangerous than it used to be, it was people like the editor of that paper – who support prohibition – who caused the very problem they now warn us of.

But that’s not all, if what The Daily Mail is warning us about is true, it blows a hole in the most basic of all claims made by prohibition supporters – that reducing the use of a drug lowers the harms caused by that use. As the government is so keen to trumpet, their policy is “working” and cannabis use is falling quite steeply. Now again, let’s not argue with that claim, it may or may not be true. But if we assume it is true than what we have now according to the government and prohibition supporters is falling use couple with increased harm. This frankly holes the prohibition policy below the watermark; falling use coupled with increased harm is the one thing that shouldn’t happen. Now of course we can point out that this lesson should have been learned with the alcohol prohibition of 1920′s America, but again, it doesn’t seem to have been.

The really pathetic thing is these people don’t realise the argument they are making against the cause they support. We as law reform campaigners need to exploit this opportunity for all its worth: Prohibition is harm maximisation.

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Perhaps one of the most controversial questions that can be asked of cannabis law reform campaigns is a very simple one: “Is cannabis a drug?” If you dare to ask this incendiary question you will get two widely differing answers: Yes and No.

So, at the risk of starting world war three let’s have a go at answering this question once and for all, but it’s not as easy as you might think and the first reason for that is we are not not consistent in these things.

First of all of course cannabis is the name of a plant and the plant produces active chemicals – the things we call we call “drugs”. Now tobacco isn’t generally thought of as a drug, yet as we know it contains the drug nicotine, but khat is generally perceived as a drug (in this country at least) because it contains the stimulant cathinone. Now it gets muddy because to the people who traditionally use Khat it’s just a plant they chew to help them get through the day, the “drug” connotation is something we (our governments) in the west have put on it in recent years and of course the same is true for cannabis. So why hasn’t that happened with tobacco? Probably the opposite is true, tobacco was familiar to the people who wrote the drug laws. What we’re seeing here is the use of a word which has its roots in cultural norms imposed by laws, which is not a very good start.

So the “no” camp have round one on balance; cannabis, like khat or tobacco is a plant and had it not been for the drugs laws it would possibly never have had the “drug” label attached to it. But that isn’t quite true.

Cannabis is popular with the people who use it for one simple reason – it gets them stoned when they smoke or eat it. So the very people who are often the most vocal in refusing to accept the drug label for cannabis are the most appreciative of its drug effects. Tobacco of course doesn’t get you stoned and indeed doesn’t seem to “do” anything, although as we now know it releases a drug – nicotine – which does produce significant effects on the brain.

So now might be a good time to find a definition of what makes a drug: The Oxford Dictionary defines a drug as:

A medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body:

* a substance taken for its narcotic or stimulant effects, often illegally:

Which is a useless definition because that obviously includes food. The free dictionary defines a drug as

a. A substance used in the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of a disease or as a component of a medication.

b. Such a substance as recognized or defined by the U.S. Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

2. A chemical substance, such as a narcotic or hallucinogen, that affects the central nervous system, causing changes in behavior and often addiction.

Free dictionary is American, but even so defining a substance as a drug because the US government says it is will not win a debate such as we’re having. A chemical that affects the CNS is also very vague and includes many things which we don’t think of as drugs, some of which lead to much more than just changes.

The UN Office Of Drug Control the UNODC doesn’t help much either, while accepting the medicial definition of drug as being a substance with the potential to prevent or cure disease or enhance physical or mental welfare it also tries a definition close to the Oxford version above

any chemical agent that alters the biochemical or physiological processes of tissues or organisms.

which again of course includes foods. Worse it also creates its own definition:

In the context of international drug control, “drug” means any of the substances listed in Schedule I and II of the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, whether natural or synthetic.

A drug is a substance which may have medicinal, intoxicating, performance enhancing or other effects when taken or put into a human body or the body of another animal and is not considered a food or exclusively a food.

“performance enhancing or other effects” is rather vague, but it’s no worse than the other definitions and does try to exclude food, but presumably would include vitamins…

This isn’t as easy as it should be, considering we have such draconian laws aimed at drugs and such entrenched ideas about them.

About.com chemistry offers perhaps the best definition, if a little strangled by bad proof reading:

A drug is a chemical that has medicinal, performance-enhancing or intoxicating effects when introduced into the body of a human or other animal. Substances which are foods are not considered to be drugs, although active ingredients from foods make be purified (sic) for use as drugs. Also, some chemicals used as drugs are identical to substances made in the body (e.g., insulin, testosterone). The chemical is considered a drug only if it is introduced into the body from the outside, such as by ingestion, injection or topical application.

So that seems the best definition to go by, but as we’ve seen it’s not universally understood and it’s distorted by the definition imposed by the UN and governments which has arbitrarily created it’s own list based on, well, no more than opinion. So:

Under the law, cannabis is a drug, but only because politicians have decided it is.

Law reform campaigners and many cannabis evangelists point out that it is an effective medicine, so on that definition it is also a drug. Here it’s important to mention a big complication which we’ll come back to, which is that cannabis, rather than the individual components within it – is a medicine. Refined extracts also have great medical potential, but so does the whole plant.

But what about the chemical introduced to the body which affects the CNS definition?

About now someone will suggest a solution: Cannabis isn’t a drug, it’s a plant that contains a drug (THC) and this makes sense. Tobacco isn’t a drug but nicotine is, it sounds like the obvious answer. Sadly though, that’s not good enough either.

The cannabis experience isn’t the product of the one THC drug. If you were to take a dose of pure THC the effect is, by all accounts, not nice at all.

BBC 3 shows the effects of pure THC compared with THC and CBD

Cannabis is pretty unique in that it produces two active chemicals, THC and CBD which are almost direct opposites in many respects. THC is the psychoactive chemical long associated with cannabis, CBD is far more subtle and only recently understood to have an important effect on the user. CBD can be thought of as a “balance” to THC and is a very important constituent. This is the rub: The cannabis drug effect is the combined effect of all the active chemicals the plant produces – THC and CBD are the most important but there are a number of other, minor compounds at work to produce the overall cannabis experience. In short, the “cannabis drug” is not THC, it’s everything all at once. This is why different strains of cannabis have such different effects on the user, indeed it may well be true that some strains are harmful for people at risk of mental illness, while others may be beneficial to the very same people.

So where does this leave us? Cannabis is a drug because:

1: The government says so for no good reason
2: Because it’s a medicine in its whole plant form
3: Because the effect of taking everything the plant produces into the body is what gives the overall cannabis experience.

Cannabis is not a drug because

1: The government says so for no good reason
1: Because it’s a medicine in its whole plant form
2: Because the effect of taking everything the plant produces into the body is what gives the overall cannabis experience.

That’s clear then.

So the conclusion to all this is really that cannabis is simply not like other drugs, it is a thing in its own right. It is a drug in the general use of the word and is understood as such even by many of those who refuse to call it a drug but enjoy getting stoned, but it isn’t a (singular) drug. The cannabis experience is something only this particular plant can give, a balance of chemicals specific to individual strains of the plant. The “cannabis drug effect” is many and varied, although specific to particular strains and therefore predictable.

It is correct then to talk of cannabis as a drug because it is taken for its drug effect but that drug effect is the effect of cannabis not the individual drugs it contains. So on balance cannabis is a drug but it’s also important to understand why it is a totally unique substance and for cannabis law reform campaigners understanding this issue is perhaps one of the most important things we need to do.